Wagner James Au reports on virtual worlds, VR & Internet culture

Monday, March 31, 2014

Confirmed: Renowned game programmer Michael Abrash, Oculus' newly confirmed chief scientist (who joined just as Facebook bought the company), sees the VR technology as The Path to the Metaverse (as his announcement is entitled): "Sometime in 1993 or 1994, I read Snow Crash," he writes on the Oculus blog, "and for the first time thought something like the Metaverse might be possible in my lifetime." So here's the curious irony: I've had a chance to e-mail a bit with Neal Stephenson over the years, and he's always distanced himself from saying the Metaverse he first described in Snow Crash was a place he thought that we'd necessarily create or use in the future: "I am just a storyteller and have never claimed nor sought the mantle of 'guy who predicts the future'", as he put it to me a few years ago.

In fact, in other interviews, Stephenson describes the future of virtual reality as probably being more game-like, than how he described The Metaverse in his landmark novel:

Cutie Moon (a Second Life shopping event inspired by classic magical girl series Sailor Moon) will be opening its doors tomorrow, so it's no surprise that many SL fashion bloggers and photographers are already bringing their A-game to showcase the incredibly cute items that will be available.

My favorite pic so far is easily the one shown above, "Cutie Scouts" by Xantheanne Resident of Xantheanne's 2nd Life. Her scouts aren't perfect copies of the originals, but they (along with the playfully minimalistic background effects she staged) evoke that "Magical Girl" feeling perfectly. It's a clean, bright, balanced and beautiful snapshot all around.

As excited as I am for Cutie Moon itself, I'm even more excited to see what everyone else will do with it. If you want to see more from the Cutie Moon fair, I'll be posting my own coverage (and pics, of course!) this Wednesday. Until then, keep an eye on the Cutie Moon Flickr group for item previews and more gorgeous blogger pics.

Friday, March 28, 2014

danah boyd has a very important post that anyone even remotely interested in the future of Oculus Rift and other virtual reality platforms should read this weekend. It suggests a fundamental challenge most people in VR haven't been dealing with (far as I can tell), and as danah often does -- being among the very best academics specializing in technology -- she obligates us all to think about the solution. Essentially, based on some preliminary research she cites and has conducted herself, she believes virtual reality technology like Oculus Rift might disproportionately make most females nauseous. Her key conclusion:

I’d posit that the problems of nausea and simulator sickness that many people report when using VR headsets go deeper than pixel persistence and latency rates. What I want to know, and what I hope someone will help me discover, is whether or not biology plays a fundamental role in shaping people’s experience with immersive virtual reality. In other words, are systems like Oculus fundamentally (if inadvertently) sexist in their design?

It takes a lot of work and a lot of flair to make a first-person shooter stand out anymore, but Blackpowder Games' Betrayer, a recent graduate of Steam's Early Access program which lets players buy into and support games while they're still in development, is an interesting example of how that can be done. The game's striking high-contrast visual style is hard to miss, but in spite of that this challenging shooter is more than just a pretty face.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

So last Sunday I was strolling back from my gym near Hollywood and Vine, when I came across this sign right alongside the Walk of Fame, somewhere in between Mae West and John Wayne:

That's right: A Hollywood nail salon is accepting Bitcoin. (Wynn Nail Spa, to be exact.) Which might seem like a wonderful thing if you're in LA and you need your nails done, and happen to have some free Bitcoin to spend.

Yesterday, Hamlet asked me if I thought that the proliferation of VR tech like the Oculus Rift could eventually alter how we dress our avatars. I sort of scoffed at the question; I didn't see why or how it could. The avatars we choose for ourselves express what we want them to express one way or another, so why would that change based solely on our physical (or digital) perspective?

And then I thought about it a little more.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that there could definitely be a change. However, any potential change will depend a lot on how we'll see ourselves. Literally. Here's what I mean:

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Second Life creator Philip Rosedale is making a new virtual world through his new startup High Fidelity (which is quite impressive, as I said last January), and here's an important thing to know about it now: It's already integrated with Oculus Rift and will launch that way: "High Fidelity runs on the Rift 'out of the box'," Philip tells me by e-mail. "It's very straightforward. We have a couple Alpha users with Oculus using High Fidelity now, and hundreds more with Oculus (Oculi?) on waitlist." Here's the Alpha waitlist sign-up he mentions.

For my money, this is the best Facebook update about Facebook acquiring Oculus Rift from a Facebook staffer (not counting Mark Zuckerberg) is this one from Facebook engineer Jim Purbrick, wryly welcoming Facebook arrival as a virtual worlds company:

Jim Purbrick, of course, was known as Babbage Linden when he worked for Linden Lab, which he left in 2010, joining Facebook last year, where many fomer Lindens also work, including engineer Ian Wilkes, and chief among them, former Linden Lab Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka, who now heads up Facebook's mobile division.

How would you describe your avatar: Sexy, cute, beautiful, or interesting? Maybe all of the above, or maybe none?

This may seem like a borderline hypocritical follow up to my post yesterday about Second Life's advertising strategy, but it's actually something that's been on my mind since I wrote about the new mesh heads from SLink. Neither Becky nor Emma, the two faces currently available from the fledgling Visage line, really "hooked" me. While I can appreciate how well made they both are, I can't see my avatar wearing either, and I wanted to pin down why that is.

The way I see it, there are 4 kinds of avatars: Sexy, cute, handsome/beautiful, and interesting (which I'll admit is a bit of a catch-all). My own Second Life avatar (and my intentions for her) experienced a pretty dramatic change when I first came across Loony Columbia's Flickr gallery. As in the pic above, she shows avatars that are cute in a way I hadn't really considered possible in SL, even though it was a style I admired a lot in RL. Thanks to Loony, I ditched my pursuit of fashion mag glamor and swerved down the path of colorful cuteness instead.

These four categories are rather oversimplified, but they certainly aren't distinct, and they don't apply to human avatars alone. They can overlap in any number of ways to create what I think is a pretty solid spectrum of the avatars I've used and seen in Second Life and beyond. I'd pin Emma and Becky in the "beautiful" category, while Loony Columbia's pictures generally fall squarely between "cute" and "sexy". At the same time, I have a couple dragon avatars I'd call both "beautiful" and "interesting". I'd even say an avatar could meet all four categories at once.

So here's what I want to know: What category would you place your own avatar(s) in... Or what category would you add to the list to include your preferred style? As always, leave your responses in the comments below!